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Research and Graduate Studies @ KU

Updates from the Office of Research and Graduate Studies — July 2007

New Procedure in Effect for Grant Proposals to NIH and NSF Which Include Research Involving Vertebrate Animals

Within one month of submitting grant proposals to the NIH or NSF (or NIH/NSF flow-through funding), researchers are now expected to submit to the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) an animal use statement (AUS) that corresponds to the research involving vertebrate animals included in the grant proposal.

Reasons for this policy:
Researchers have increasingly waited until an award was issued to begin the process of submitting an animal use statement to the IACUC. Since spending under an award cannot begin until the AUS has been approved, researchers have commonly asked to accelerate the AUS review process beyond the monthly IACUC review meetings in order to set up their award accounts. It is unreasonable to expect the IACUC to perform immediate, ad hoc reviews (and potential follow-up reviews) of animal use statements when there would have been ample time to perform the reviews normally had the researchers submitted an AUS in advance of the award. Since NIH and NSF tend to require extensive animal use information as part of the grant application, providing this information to the IACUC in an animal use statement shortly after the proposal submission should not be an overwhelming burden to the researcher.

This policy will have the added benefit of providing to Research and Graduate Studies animal use protocols that correspond directly to externally-funded awards from NIH and NSF. In accepting externally sponsored awards, KU has many reporting obligations to the funding agencies, many of which involve the oversight of any vertebrate animal research under the award. Having animal use statements that correlate directly with the work being performed under these sponsored projects will facilitate reporting requirements considerably.

Consequences of not complying with the policy:
The IACUC will not provide ad hoc reviews of AUS applications for researchers who had the opportunity to submit an AUS at or near the proposal stage but failed to do so.

Animal use statement forms, training materials, applicable university policies, and other useful information regarding animal research at KU may be found on the Animal Care Unit Web site.